Despite their official dissolution a few years ago, 16 Horsepower casts a long shadow that colors the gothic Americana genre today. Ex-members' bands (Woven Hand, Lilium, etc.) are engaging and critically lauded, but the demand for posthumous 16 Horsepower releases never seems to cease. Live March 2001 is a live recording of one of 16 Horsepower's classic, best recorded shows, released in North America on Alternative Tentacles and on Glitterhouse in Europe.

While live albums are often fodder for completists, 16 Horsepower's intoxicating material becomes even more potent on stage, making 16 Horsepower Live a must-have release. Their instrumentation transforms the usually lighthearted banjo and squeezebox into the loneliest choir that accompanies the smoldering voice of David Eugene Edwards. Often likened to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 16 Horsepower definitely has that laudanum-soaked aura, but is firmly rooted in Americana. Unlike their contemporaries, however, they aim beyond popular music in the key of sad and delve right into the human condition for something weighty and substantial. The way 16 Horsepower pours themselves into writing and performing, Live March 2001, the third installation of their live material, will surely be welcomed with open arms, not with snipes about bludgeoning dead equines.

This epic double cd is Brand New!

"Recorded during the Secret South tour in 2001. It features one
complete 90 minute show showing the band in their natural habitat the
stage. They played songs from their acclaimed A&M-debut
Sackcloth`n'Ashes, their follow-up Low Estate and their Glitterhouse
debut Secret South. One of our best, if not our best live show ever
says the band themselves. Comes in a multifold Digipak.
Here's what the UK press said about Secret South: This is one secret
that begs to be shared."- Q

" Influenced by folk's more whacked out, gloomy, voodoo-visioned
forebears, 16 Horsepower continue to narrate their haunting
campfire-punk yarns without a modern-day care in the world. Instead,
David Eugene and his melancholia-drenched posse of LA dreamers prefer
the dark grandeur that only comes with mournful swathes of countryfied
guitar, of heavy-hearted violins, pianos and accordions, of lonesome
banjo-picking and Ennio Morricone tautness. Add a dash of Dylan-esque
roots-philosophy and the result is a forlorn dustbowl saloon bar where
Nick Cave woefully sinks bourbons with the Gun Club only moments after
a loved one's funeral parade. There's scant evidence of the year 2000
within the desolate pleas of 'Burning Bush', the ghostly magnificence
of 'Praying Arm Lane' or the superlative rendition of trad classic
'Wayfaring Stranger' but 16 Horsepower aren't about such misleading
concerns. For them, the objective was to make a fucking brilliant
album where the mood is king, the delivery is queen and studied modern
coolness is a jester that's one misplaced quip away from being the
lion's breakfast. And, of course, they've succeeded. Sometimes, you
just have to accept that there's, ahem, nothing as pure as folk."- NME